(1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods of and/or apparatus for detecting the status of a cable termination and has been devised particularly but not solely for use in detecting the status of the connection between a patient and one or more cables from a patient monitoring system such as those monitoring systems used in the healthcare industry.
(2) Description
In medical patient monitoring systems requiring attachment of electrical cables to the body of a patent, it can be of considerable advantage to know if such cables are correctly terminated. A detached cable may not be immediately obvious resulting in time wasting fault diagnosis or a possible life threatening situation. For example, careful control of a physical characteristic such as body temperature is often required for patients such as new-born babies (infants) in hospital environments. Once such way of controlling an infant's body temperature is to place the infant in a warmer. The warmer maintains the body temperature of an infant and radiates heat selectively when or as required to maintain the body temperature of the infant at a desired level. The infant's body temperature is measured by the warmer control circuitry using an electric cable having a temperature probe attached to an external surface of the infants body.
It is important that the cable is correctly terminated, that is, that the temperature probe is in secure contact with the infant's body in order that an accurate measurement of the infant's body temperature may be made. It would clearly be advantageous if the warmer control sound an audible alarm or show a visible alarm if the temperature probe was not securely connected to the infants body. This is especially important since at present a visual inspection is used to determine if a cable is connected to a patient and this is not always sufficient for the user to determine whether the probe is in fact securely connected.